James P. Dougherty

Adjunct Senior Fellow for Business and Foreign Policy

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James Dougherty is an adjunct senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He currently directs the Roundtable Series on Technology, Innovation, and American Primacy.

He has almost thirty years of diverse operating experiences in both informational technology and information services as chief executive officer (CEO). He has worked on startups with up to nearly a billion dollar P&L. He has produced turnarounds, taken companies public, successfully sold companies, and raised substantial private equity in one of the worst markets in twenty-five years.

Dougherty's career began at Lotus Development, where he became the general manager of the internet division and a member of the executive committee at the time of the company's sale to IBM. He then produced four consecutive turnarounds for investors—IntraLinks, Gartner, Prodigy, and MataMatrix—which resulted in excellent outcomes for investors such as Silver Lake, Kleiner Perkins, Integral Capital, and Rho Capital, among others. He then joined Great Hill Partners as the operating partner working with seven portfolio companies on the boards of directors, as advisor to the CEOs, and, in one case, as interim CEO. He is now cofounder of a startup called Madaket, an HCIT company based in Boston.

He has served on the board of directors for twelve companies and five nonprofits. He is now on the board of trustees for the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Bright Spirit Children's Foundation both in Boston and the Foreign Policy Association in New York City.

Dougherty lives in Boston and Cape Cod with his wife. His three children are grown and live all over the world.

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  • Technology and Innovation

    On April 20th, 2022, The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Roundtable Series on Technology, Innovation, and American Primacy sponsored the virtual roundtable, “Reimagining U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition.” The event was organized and moderated by James Dougherty, Adjunct Senior Fellow and the panel included Mr. Earl Carr, founder and CEO of CJPA Global Advisors and editor of the new book "From Trump to Biden and Beyond: Reimagining US-China Relations” and Dr. Carolyn Kissane, NYU Academic Director, Center of Global Affairs, & Director of SPS Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab. 
  • Economics

    Supply chains are an integral part of the American economy and actively drive U.S. innovation. However, what is included in the term has lacked an empirical definition. Reviewing the suppliers and creating a new categorization that separates supply chain industries (i.e., those that sell their goods and services primarily to other businesses or governments) from business-to-consumer (B2C) industries, provides a more accurate understanding of the U.S. economy and the role of manufacturing in innovation. Mercedes Delgado, associate professor of strategy and innovation at the Copenhagen Business School, and Karen Mills, senior fellow at Harvard Business School, discuss their recent paper on “A New Categorization of the U.S. Economy” and its implications for innovation.
  • Public Health Threats and Pandemics

    The rapid rate of infection in the ongoing pandemic is catalyzing technological innovation to prevent the next potential pandemic from ever reaching a global scale. Technology is the essential tool for early testing, detection, and tracking. Through the use of modern data science techniques to develop epidemiological forecast models and personal technology such as smart thermometers and wearables to track trends across regions, preventative measures are more powerful than ever before. Our speaker Inder Singh, founder and CEO of Kinsa Inc., discusses the current and changing landscape of technology and infectious disease prevention.
  • Technology and Innovation

    Research and development (R&D) are fundamental to the progress of innovation. With the advent of the internet of things, an interconnected global development landscape, and uneven but increased investments into R&D, the difficulty of maintaining U.S. primacy and competitiveness is more challenging than ever before. Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital and Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discuss the current trajectory of research and development and its impact on innovation.
  • United States

    Rising unemployment and the threat of a Moody’s downgrade have highlighted the lagging economic recovery. While innovation is key to increasing U.S. global competitiveness, economists are divided over how to achieve this. Here, four experts debate policy options.

Top Stories on CFR

Immigration and Migration

Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the record surge in migrants and asylum seekers crossing the U.S. southern border.

Center for Preventive Action

Every January, CFR’s annual Preventive Priorities Survey analyzes the conflicts most likely to occur in the year ahead and measures their potential impact. For the first time, the survey anticipates that this year, 2024, the United States will contend not only with a slew of global threats, but also a high risk of upheaval within its own borders. Is the country prepared for the eruption of election-related instability at home while wars continue to rage abroad?

Central America